My understanding of London's pinch points relates to a few people I know with real estate there. As I get it: - you can't really knock down old buildings - All the new building happened after the Blitz - There's basically one district where you can actually do any real renovations, thanks to the Nazis - It's the only English-speaking capital halfway between Tokyo and New York ...so it's going to be like Dubai - a place where the stupendously rich compete with the stupendously rich and the merely middle-class will fight for scraps.
Yes, it's already turning into a ghost town. It's not just the housing rules, though - there's more: - the Green Belt which prevents any outward expansion - shadow taxes of up to 800% of construction price - awful road system so you can't commute to the city by car, unlike most American cities - mediocre intercity train system so you can't commute to the city by train easily, unlike most European cities They do have the Eurostar high-speed train to France. Lille, through which all trains to Brussels and Paris go through, now also has a surge of gentrification because it's only 80 minutes with a high-speed train. Never mind the fact that it's in another country on the other side of the Canal.
I'd forgotten about the Green Belt. And I know that British Rail has really been sucking hard; as I recall, the rates have gone up like tenfold over the past 20 years. The last time I was in London - which was in the early '90s - our hosts basically figured they could accomplish exactly one task in London on any given day. Which, fuck - beats Los Angeles. And i realized from all my maps yesterday that it is legitimately as far from Seattle to Vancouver as it is from Ventura to Riverside.
British rail is no more. They decided to privatize it and cut it up in pieces, giving every piece to other operators. It didn't go down well. Just look this (cartographic) mess:
I wonder how the middle class will respond to the greater wealth disparity in London relative to the rest of the UK? Will there be a middle class flight to the rest of the nation that could not occur in the UAE? The whole of the UK is significantly more livable than the UAE, thanks to both climate and historical development that makes the whole nation relatively dense with towns and cities. If there is a flight of the non-stupendously rich to suburbs and other cities, will employment centers respond? Or will those who need to work be forced to stay in an area where they have to compete with the super rich?